Ryman, Rebecca (102 page)

Every
hair of his bushy eyebrows quivered with scepticism. "Well,
I
have
a wee idea it's something to do with Your Ladyship's visit to Trident.
And,
there's
na a damned mother's son in town who does na believe it."

"Really?"
She spent a moment explaining the error to Bimal Babu and then dismissed him
with the bills. "I can't help what people choose to believe, Mr.
Donaldson. That's their business."

He
was not to be put off. "Rumor is, someone forced Raventhorne's hand.
Rumour
is."

"I
shouldn't imagine anyone
could
force Mr. Raventhorne's
hand! At least,
that is what you yourself have given me to understand. What possible pressure
could I have brought to bear? I scarcely know the man. My visit was only to ask
about our credit facilities."

"Which,"
he pointed out with some perverse satisfaction, "are
yet
to be
restored, I notice!" He scanned her impassive face through slitted eyes.
Gad, she was a rum 'un, a real
rum
'un! He would dearly like to know how
she had swung it, and swung it she bloody had! He'd wager his best tartan socks
on that, he would.

Frowning,
Olivia tapped a front tooth with the end of her pen. "No, they have not
been restored yet," she admitted, then started to write again. "But
they will, Mr. Donaldson. I assure you they will."

He
snorted.
"Just
because he's laid doon good shekels for a sieve na
worth a row of beans?"

"No.
Because what Mr. Raventhorne has done, he's done out of the goodness of his
heart," Olivia said with perfect seriousness. "Which goes to show
that he does have one, after all." She dabbed what she had written with a
blotter and blinded him with a smile.

Donaldson
wasn't sure whether he should laugh or go up in smoke. He settled for further
sarcasm.
"If
he has a heart then it sure ain't like any
I've
known—unless
our definitions differ."

"In
that case, maybe he's decided to repent." She smiled at the sarcasm but
otherwise ignored it. "Let's just be grateful for the salvation."

"It's
Ransome
that's benefitted from this miraculous salvation, na Farrowsham!
You truly believe he's planning to let the Agency off the hook?" He
expressed his disgust with a hoot.

No,
Olivia did not believe that, not for a moment. But she didn't have the heart to
confirm his justified trepidation. "Let's not be unduly pessimistic, Mr.
Donaldson," she comforted instead. "The worst may never happen."

But
they both knew that it would. When Donaldson related to his wife the day's
events that evening, he described at some length a curious weapon called the
boomerang, which was used by aborigines in Australia, he had heard. He had
always been intrigued to learn how it worked. He had a horrible suspicion, he
told Cornelia, that he was about to find out for himself in the very near
future.

In
spite of his open relief and astonishment, neither did Arthur Ransome rejoice.
Immediately he had no time to unravel
his confusions or ask for explanations,
for Hal Lubbock was hopping mad. In retaliation for being deprived of his
timber he was threatening to storm Raventhorne's office with the specific
intention of "re'rangin' his goddam nose on his goddam face," and it
was with great difficulty that Ransome restrained him. It was only after fresh
supplies had been secured from the timber market and several bottles of bourbon
begged and borrowed from various quarters that Lubbock quieted and Ransome
could sit down and ponder.

That
evening, filled with rare resolve, Ransome called again upon Olivia. "I
think the time has come, my dear," he said decisively, "when I must
be told what went on behind the sale of the
Daffodil.
Why does
Raventhorne want the ship so badly as to offer such an unrealistically high
price for it?"

"He
doesn't want the ship. He never has. He has no use for it. What he wants badly
is something that was mounted on it."

"Mounted
on it?" Ransome looked blank. "What?"

"The
figure-head on the prow. Am I right in presuming that it was his mother who had
chiselled it? At least, that's what you yourself once told me. Don't you
remember?"

He
obviously didn't, for he continued to look utterly at sea.
"I
told
you? When?"

"A
very long time ago. You said that she was good with her hands—she carved wooden
toys and you bought some from her once, also a ship's mascot. At that time you
had only one vessel, the
Daffodil.
If you had mounted it at all, it had
to be on the
Daffodil.
" From the crystal decanter on the sideboard,
Olivia poured two glasses of Madeira and gave him one. "When I learned of
this sudden bid for the ship, I recalled what you had told me. Without your
permission, I'm afraid," she smiled an apology, "I went to see the
ship for myself. The figure-head on the prow was obviously the work of an
enthusiastic amateur, but it was very beautiful. It had a startling spontaneity
about it. I could see that it had been executed with great feeling. And the
figure itself, a female with her hands stretched above her head as if reaching
out for something unattainable, was that of a young girl draped in a deerskin.
Don't some tribal women cover themselves with animal pelts?"

Listening
with undivided attention, Ransome nodded but vaguely as his memory started to
uncloud. "Now that you mention it, yes, I do recall saying something of
the sort. And yes, I recall that it was Jai's mother who had carved that
figure-head. She was sitting in the garden one day, Josh said, chiselling it
when
he saw her and, on an impulse, bought it for the
Daffodil.
We did mount
it on the prow, come to think of it, but good grief—you came to deduce all that
just
from the few words I had let drop?"

"No.
In fact, I had forgotten about them. It was something Estelle later mentioned
that brought them back to mind. In Raventhorne's house, she said, she had seen
a few of those wooden toys his mother was fond of making, although at the time
Estelle had no idea who the artist was. One of the toys, she told me casually,
was in the shape of a female figure that reminded her of a ship's mascot. Her
comment meant nothing to me at the time, but later, when I heard that
Raventhorne had made an offer for the
Daffodil,
I suddenly remembered
that, curiously enough, both you and Estelle had used the words
ship's
mascot.
What Estelle of course was thinking of was the
Daffodil,
where
she had seen the figure-head. Raventhorne obviously still retained a miniature
replica, possibly a sort of draft design for the larger model." Having
suitably doctored the story for Ransome's benefit, she added carefully,
"Raventhorne, Estelle felt, was very . . . particular about his mother's
little souvenirs."

"Yes,
I daresay he was," Ransome said absently, still not able to shed his
bafflement. "But if he wanted only the figure-head, why in God's name did
he have to pay for the whole ship? Had I known, I would have been pleased to
let him have that figurehead with my compliments!"

"He
paid for the whole ship because there was no other way he
could
have
procured that figure-head. Certainly, he would never have
asked
you for
it!"

"Well,
he could have just... just taken it! The ship was lying out in the open. Two
meagre watchmen were not enough to stop
other
vandals."

"He
didn't consider it worth the trouble. He was so sure of getting the
Daffodil
for next to nothing. By the time he must have realised that it wouldn't be
quite that easy, it was too late to remove the figure-head." She smiled in
renewed apology. "You see, I already had."

"God
bless my soul!" Ransome exclaimed. "You removed it? How . . .?"

"I
took one of Mary Ling's brothers to saw it off the prow. On the day Raventhorne
made you payment in full, I retrieved it from my basement store-room where I
had hidden it and had it delivered to Raventhorne's house."

Amazed,
Ransome said nothing for a while. Then he asked slowly, "Who told
Raventhorne that his bid for the
Daffodil
wouldn't be considered unless he
raised it—was it you? Is that why you went to see him?"

"I
went to see him to request him to restore our credit facilities. In passing, I
might have mentioned something about the
Daffodil."

He
lowered his eyes towards his drink and kept them there. "You have taken a
great deal of trouble on our behalf, Olivia," he said, uneasy. "Are
you sure that was wise?"

Olivia
shrugged. "Wise or not, Raventhorne has paid you a fair price for what he
wanted. That's all that matters."

"Is
it? He has lost face, Olivia. He does not forgive easily. However grateful I
might be for your extraordinary endeavours, and I am, believe me, it is
Farrowsham that must be considered. Raventhorne will harass you mercilessly,
and do God knows what other damage."

"Yes,
I am not unaware of that possibility, Uncle Arthur. We will just have to tackle
each harassment as it comes." She quickly reassured him with a gesture.
"What you must forgive me for are all the liberties I have taken,
unbidden. I have done things behind your back, lied to you, been far from
straightforward . . ."

He
dismissed her apologies with a wave, but he could not shake off his visible
distress with the valiant smile he attempted. Like Willie Donaldson, Ransome
knew that the sale of the
Daffodil
was by no means the end of the
matter.

As,
of course, it was not.

Three
days later Raventhorne struck again. Farrowsham's most recent consignment of
indigo intended for London, packed and ready for loading at the wharf, was
refused space aboard Trident's clipper scheduled to sail the following day on
the morning tide. The consignment had been paid for in full as per the new
requirements, and the bills of lading were all in order, as was the clearance
from the Customs. No reason was specified for the refusal to accept the cargo.
Moitra's businesslike letter only stated bluntly Trident's inability to oblige.
It also added that no guarantee could be given for hold space for future cargo
from Farrowsham in any of the company's clippers. Enclosed with the letter was
a banker's draft for the sum paid in advance for freight.

After
Donaldson had expended his rage and much of his choice verbiage on Trident's
hapless messenger boy, his own
nervous staff and the world in general, he sat
slumped over his desk sunk in gloom blacker than any he had ever known before.
"I knew it would come to this, I
knew
it!" was what he kept
muttering to himself over and over again, now with no pious glow of perverse
satisfaction at having been proved right. He had passed beyond that. All he
could think of was that Farrowsham,
his
Farrowsham, held in sacred trust
by him for the soul of Caleb Birkhurst and the comfortable profit of his son,
had become the ham in a sandwich neither to his taste nor of his making.
Without a sin to its fair name, Farrowsham was being pilloried, put in the
stocks.

Privately,
not even Olivia could deny that she was shaken. Trident's blanket ban on their
cargo was indeed a severe broadside, and she could not insult Donaldson's
intelligence by trying to minimise it. Their profitability would be badly hurt,
for in the export-import business, as in any other, time translated
automatically into money. It was not that there were no other clippers
available; American lines sent plenty of vessels, but they called irregularly
and their schedules were erratic. Raventhorne guaranteed sailings as regular as
clockwork; the speed and accuracy with which his ships delivered goods to their
destinations were admirable. Which, of course, was the reason for his
considerable success as a shipowner. To secure other hold space now in outgoing
vessels, Farrowsham would have to pay through its nose and bribe Company
officials and captains heavily. It would mean stealing cargo space booked by
others, which would, understandably, create dissension and bad blood in the
business community—something Donaldson had always avoided with his scrupulous
code of ethics. In any case, only Indiamen were available and these took double
the time Trident's clippers did. Not to be overlooked were the gleeful gains of
competitors, already at wharfside scrambling furiously for the hold space
vacated by Farrowsham in the
Jamuna,
as well as for future bookings.